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NYPD’s massive overtime spending blows through budget projections, faces scrutiny from City Council
By
Matt Katz
Published Mar 20, 2023
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Gwynne Hogan
By
Matt Katz
Published Mar 20, 2023
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The NYPD’s ballooning overtime budget faced scrutiny from City Council members on Monday, but neither police nor policy makers offered detailed ideas about how to rein it in.
Overtime expenditures were $2.2 billion last fiscal year, 93% higher than budgeted, according to a new report from City Comptroller Brad Lander. And last month, halfway through the current fiscal year, the NYPD had already exceeded its budgeted allotment for the year, spending $472 million on overtime for uniformed officers.
City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams noted that the NYPD has the lowest absentee rate of any other uniformed agency in the city, and asked why so much money has to be spent on overtime.
“Overtime is a critical tool to maintain public safety,” Commissioner Keechent Sewell said, adding that overtime costs for one category, planned events, had recently been curtailed.
NYPD officials also said that a piece of the current year’s overtime budget will be reimbursed by the state: — $62 million to support the surge of officers in the subways, which they attributed to recent crime reductions. Officers are also being ordered to work longer hours and come to work on days off as part of a crime-fighting strategy in the subways.
Lander’s office found that NYPD annual overtime totals have skyrocketed $700 million over the last decade. One large chunk of overtime through the last three years went to what the NYPD categorizes as “anti-police protests” — $225 million in all.
A handful of protesters, objecting to alleged abuses by the NYPD’s Strategic Response Group, which polices protests, squeaked toy pigs at Monday’s hearing and were removed from City Council chambers.
The NYPD’s $5.44 billion allotment in the proposed budget for fiscal year 2024 stands in sharp contrast to the flat funding proposed for the city’s public defenders, who also testified at Monday’s budget hearing. The defense attorneys say salaries are so low that attorneys are quitting, even as there are 450 pending homicide cases that their lawyers are handling. They asked the council for a $125 million bump, largely for higher salaries and to hire staff to handle increased discovery volume.
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nypd
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Matt Katz
Matt Katz is a former WNYC & Gothamist reporter.
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